For those who have the same warped sense of humour this Letter can also be had in French.
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Thursday, November 24, 2016

Was my complaint to the Press Council about being lied to
repeatedly the final one that broke Independent Media’s faith in that body’s
ability to fairly police its publications?

As you probably know
that’s Iqbal Surve's empire that claims to be the leading newspaper group in
the country with titles like the Cape
Times, the Cape Argus, The Star in Johannesburg and various
others.

As a former newspaper investigative journalist living in Cape Town I have a blog
to keep me off the streets. So when I got an exclusive I thought the post would
make a good story for my local morning daily the CapeTimes.

It was about a doctor (caring doctor) charged by
the Health Profession Council with abusing his doctor/patient relationship to
enrich himself.

The Cape Times News Editor, Lynne Johns evidently agreed
with me after I sent her an email on 11
July with a link to the post. I told her, “You can take anything off my
blog, just credit it. I’m a former Sunday
Times investigative journalist so I know a bit about how to do
investigations.”

I followed this with a call the same day to make sure she
got the email and I again emphasised that my blog should be credited. This she
agreed to, if the story was used.

In an email she thanked me for giving her the link and said
she would pass the story on to one of their reporters.

After that I got
nothing but one broken promise after another.

13 July: The
story appeared as the front page lead under the byline of Francesca Villette. I
had given her the contact details of the complainant and had sent her
affidavits I had received. She too undertook to credit my blog. But nothing
appearedand nor was I or my blog mentioned in the brief peace the following
day about the hearing being adjourned. There was still room of course for
Villette’s email address at the bottom.

14 July: I
outlined what had happened in an email to the Editor Aneez Salie. It began,
“What has just happened to me is what gives journalists a bad name.” He later
claimed he only saw my email on 18 July
and he would “meet with those involved tomorrow and revert to you.” This he
never did even though he expressed his “sorrow for the inconvenience.”

19 July: When
I complaining to Johns on the phoned she said she did not know about any
undertaking. Her email response made nonsense of this when she wrote, “Onceagain thank you for alerting us to the story and sharing your knowledge, we
really appreciate it. Unfortunately the subs had to cut the story. This is why
the reference to your blog did not make the paper. However,there will be a
follow-up and then Francesca will do a sidebar on you, your blog and how you
uncovered the story.Please accept my apologies.” I
told her it could be months if not years before the case came up again to
warrant a follow up story and that it was “ an old tired excuse to blame the
subs.”

20 July: The
paper had another chance to put things right, but didn’t. On page four it
had a story about how, for the second time in seven months, the CapeTimes
front page had been chosen among the world’s Top Ten by the Newseum in WashingtonDC.
And as life would have it this was the one with the story I originated splashed
across it. The article about this achievement told readers what the story was
about but again there was no mention of who had tipped the paper off. In the
background at the top of the page was a photograph of President Zuma and Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa unveiling the Delville Wood Memorial in France. The
story about this was on the inside pages.

24 July: Fed
up with the ongoing deceit I complained to the Press Council.

28 July: The
Council’s Public Advocate, LatiefaMobara
replied saying that the “CapeTimes is keen to set the
record straight.” She included the paper’s response from Damien Terblanche, its
Internal Legal Counsel. He began by explaining, for my benefit, how a newspaper
works. His reason for my blog not being mentioned in the Newseum’s story was
that it was not “the front page lead that got us the accolade, but the page in
its entirety, specifically our masthead picture” showing the unveiling of the
memorial. How this prevented my contribution being credited in the part that
referred to the front page lead or any of the earlier stories only he knows. “We
are surprised and disturbed that Abbott has turned to the Press Ombud when we
were still in communication with him,” he went on. He repeated the paper’s
offer to do a sidebarabout me and my blog when the case came up again. “This
is surely more than we would do for anyone else. We request that the Ombud
refers Abbott back to us.” She did that and I told her I would accept their
offer provided I could be assured that the next time the matter came up I would not
be told there was again no room for a sidebar. I explained that I had only
complained to her because I got no reply to my last email. I asked her to tell the CapeTimes“If it makes an agreement it should stick to it.”

3 November: A
report on the resumed hearing appeared on Page 4 of the CapeTimes
by Johns herself this time. There was another one by her the following day
after the case was again adjourned. True to form that promised sidebar never
materialised and nothing about me or my blog was mentioned.

Johns telling us about how important 'truth' is at theCape Times

4 November: I complained to her again.

6 November: This
was a Sunday and her email was as though there had never ever been a problem.
“Good morning Jon, how are you,” she began. “I can do a sidebar this morning. I have quite a bit of copy left over from last week.Can I call you? Regards,
Lynette.” We had a conversation shortly afterwards and she again promised me
that illusive sidebar would appear with her story in the following Tuesday’s
edition. Guess what, not only was the sidebar invisible but so was the story as
well.

8 November: My
email of disgust to her went unanswered. I told her “It looks as though the CapeTimes
has been pulling my chain.” It ended, “The obvious heading for my next post
would be Newspaper Immorality a la CapeTimes.

10 November: The
surprising twist to the saga was when I told Latiefa what had happened. She disclosed
thatas Independent Media, the
publishers of the Cape Times, had withdrawn from the Press Council they no
longer had any jurisdiction over any of its papers. It appears that with 77
complaints against it to the Press Council this year, including some
unfavourable findings, Independent Media decided it would be better off dealing
with them itself. Heaven for bid that I should tell a lie, but it’s a
possibility that my complaint was the one that finally pushed this Group into
resigning. It pulled out allegedly to save legal costs because it felt that the
Council should never have abolished the waiver clause. This compelled
complainants to agree to relinquish their right to take legal action against media
owners if they wanted their complaint heard by the Council. And when I Googled
this I saw that Jovial Rantao, a former editor of various papers in the Independent Media Group, had been appointed its internal ombudsman to deal with
complaints with “immediate effect” from October
21.Having dealt withineffective internal newspaper
ombudsmen before I didn’t have much faith in this one. But I thought I would test
him with my CapeTimes experience. Bad idea.

11 & 15 November: I emailed him, but got no reply.

Rantao

17 November: I
tried phoning him at the Group’s Johannesburg
head office on the number (011 633 2180) that I had been given for him and
the automatic response was that his voice mail had not yet been activated. On the same day I spoke to Jennifer Johnson
in another section of the headquarters and she undertook to get him to contact
me. She copied me an email she had sent him asking him to do this. By 24 November I had heard nothing from him.

So
that’s a very cost efficient way of getting rid of a complaint with the minimum
of effort.

When he was appointed Rantao was quoted as saying,
“Independent Media has always maintained high standards of ethical journalism
as guided by the Press Code. My role will be to ensure that our publications
continue to adhere to these high standards and that complaints from members of
the public are dealt with fairly and efficiently.”

My experience was a long way from making this Rantao statement a reality.

Among his many accomplishments he is a former
Chairperson of the South African National Editors Forum. Ironically under the
heading of “Core Principles” it states “SANEF is founded on high ideals in an
industry that, around the world, is often maligned for its lack of integrity.”

And if you want to know why, you need look no further than
the CapeTimes.

Regards

Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who has never been in
favour of self policing. Would you value my opinion if I told you that my blog
was the best one in the world?

P.S. With
the advent of social media information of all kinds gets flashed around theworld in an instant, making it more and more difficult for papers to get
exclusive news. That’s one of the reasons why so many of them are declining. So
it’s very short sighted of papers if they don’t treat people like me in a way
that encourages them to keep passing on good stories. In my case at least they
got the raw material for their business for free. Most firms would relish this
prospect.

Handouts never made anybody rich except for those who
corrupt the system. They certainly don’t encourage people to work hard and make
a prosperous life for themselves.

Your idea is to give every person who has nothing a 1000 sq
m plot from the country’s unused land, as close to “an existing town or city as
possible.” Imagine the in fighting and bribery there would be to get the plots next
to the big cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.
A further complication would be that the value of the plots would vary
enormously and a lot of well off people would suddenly claim to be poor.

Your other pie in the sky idea is to have R20 000 deposited
into a bank account in the name of every child born. The money would then be
invested by our asset managers for “at least a 10% return” until the child
could access it at the age of 21.

Anybody
who has had a retirement annuity where they are forced by law to have the money
looked after by an insurance company will know how much the returns suffer from
the amounts that are creamed off in fees. Mine has grown well short of 10% in
the last 10 years.

You go on to say that about 1.1 million people are born
every year and by the time the first children turn 21 there would be more than
R20-trillion in the kitty. You add more wishful thinking with, “The state would
claim its investment back from their estates when they die.”

Much
like the current student loans scheme, no doubt, where they are supposed to
repay their loans once they have a job, but many don’t bother and the
Government doesn’t make much effort to collect what is due either.

“We would never have to entertain a ratings agency ever again,” you claim.

It’s as simple as that. Only you don’t say where all this
money would come from; where you would find the people honest enough to look
after it for all those years and so on.

Your Communist type, master plan would produce different
“pressing social threats,” like protests from people who urgently need their
money paid before they reach 21. Then
too we would have abandoned plots of land all over the place in areas where
people don’t want to live.

You also told us that your dream scheme depended on the
impossible, certainly in South
Africa that is …. “clean, efficient
government and brave politicians to make it happen.”

The real answer surely is to reform the capitalist system
itself. It can’t last in its present form where so few people have more money
than the rest put together.

There should be a ceiling on wealth. And once that ceiling
is reached you pay say 90% of your income in tax.

Of
course that will never happen because the power is in the hands of the rich.

A French Revolution type revolt is the only way to placate
the destitute and give the rich the fright they need. But that won’t solve
anything either as most people, particularly the masses, will then be far worse
off than they were before.

It wouldn’t be long before man’s greed would produce a new
crop of super rich once again.

Can you
imagine Julius Malema and his cronies choosing to ride around in an old bakkie
instead of a top of the range Mercedes Benz or BMW if your plan became a
reality?

Thanks Bruce for this idea that was no doubt conceived to
convey the message that the Sunday Times has the welfare of the poor of our
country at heart. It was a bit of light hearted reading on a par with Zapiro’s
cartoon which was on the same page. Luckily the poor can’t afford to buy your
paper otherwise they might soon be clogging our cities with marches when they don’t
get their free bit of land.

Regards

Jon

P.S. Note
to readers: Apart from being a regular SundayTimes
columnist Bruce is also Editor-in-Chief of Business Day and the Financial
Mail in Johannesburg,
so he won’t be needing a free plot. He’s already a very healthy CAPITALIST. But no doubt any additions to his immediate or
extended family would qualify for that R20 000 nest egg.

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About Me

I was born in South Africa just before the Boer War whenever that was?
Started life with a golden spoon in my mouth which made eating rather difficult as a result I was under nourished as a child.
Went to a posh school where I only got moved up a class when my old man donated another sight screen for the cricket pitch.
Career prospects were dismal and I was once turned down for a job in the London sewers. "Too highly qualified;"that’s what they said.
I became a journalist when the Police Force wouldn’t have me.
Like most journos I know nothing about everything but I still write about it.
I decided to have my own blog so I wouldn't have to drink with the editor for hours on end to get my stuff published when according to my independent assessment it’s always of great news value.
My religious beliefs are: You only die once so remember, "You can’t be serious and Have Fun."
NEWS FLASH: I've just been appointed the Poor Man's Press Ombudsman by Presidential Decree (Not to be confused with the PRESS COUNCIL OF SOUTH AFRICA'S, SA Press Ombudsman)